Renovation

All of the virtues and powers of God are attained primarily by prayer. Without prayer, there is no spiritual life. Prayer is natural and we were fashioned by God to live a life of prayer. It should be brief and regular so that it can be kept in all conditions and circumstances. To remind yourself that it is "face to face," place an icon of Christ before you as you pray. At this time, we are in the season of Great Lent. At all of the Lenten services the Prayer of St. Ephraim of Syria is read. It supplicates God for those virtues especially necessary to the Christian life.

Emperor Leo the Isaurian took a strong stand against the veneration of icons. In 730 he published a law prohibiting their use and ordered icons to be taken down from all public places. In 754 Leo called a Church Council and the bishops attending it were carefully selected to please the Emperor. The Council declared itself against the icons. Leo’s son, Constantine, applied the Council’s decision with sword and fire. Most of the “new martyrs” were monks. The monasteries and hermitages took a heroic stand in the defense of their faith. The movement against icons became a movement against monasticism. Gradually the persecution subsided and in 787 Empress Irene called the Seventh Ecumenical Council (the last one) which gave an exact wording of the Church’s teaching on icons. This stated, “Icons are to be venerated; God alone is to be served in faith.” The Emperor who succeeded Irene ordered that all icons in churches be placed so high that they could not be reached. Everyone understood this to be the first sign of a new effort to stamp out the veneration of icons. This time, however, the whole Church was ready. The Patriarch sent out an appeal to all the faithful. He was immediately arrested and exiled, but his words had reached his flock. On Palm Sunday, in 815, a thousand monks of the famous Monastery of Studion, in Constantinople, crossed the entire city in a solemn procession bearing icons. A persecution of monks and all those who supported the use of icons followed. In 843, 28 years later, the Orthodox teaching finally triumphed, thanks to Empress Theodosia. On the first Sunday of Lent in 843 the veneration of icons was solemnly proclaimed at the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople. The day was called “The Triumph of Orthodoxy” and its memory is still kept in the Orthodox Church on the first Sunday of Lent.